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It's a bit of a grab-bag today. I found myself needing to finally learn
the melody to a couple of songs that I'd so far only played guitar on,
because I want to do them in my upcoming concert at Consonance. You know
that thing about dominos? That.

So the only recordings I could find were back in 2009. And, for some
unaccountable reason, I hadn't put up the audio for that
concert. It soon became clear that one reason I hadn't was that the
performer tags in the audio files were wrong...

... and once I'd fixed that, I decided to put my concert index into a
sensible, most-recent-first format. (It had been most recent
year first, but most recent last within each year.) So
that's done now. And Baycon 2008 didn't have an index.html
file. It does now.

... and if you're still with me, there's a somewhat off-the-wall bonus.
You see, this week the R&D lab I work for publiclyannounced a
subsidiary in India called Ricoh Innovations Private Limited (RIPL)

So what was the first song that popped into my head when first I heard
about it? Right. The Grateful Dead - Ripple. I've been waiting five months
to post that one...

Odd day. I had an extremely satisfying morning at work, building
the pjsua command line SIP user agent/softphone and verifying that it
actually works with the hardware we're planning to use for our
demo in late January. $BOSS was my assistant; he's thrilled. I'm
relieved -- this close to retirement age I kinda have to keep
pulling miracles out of my hat to stay employed.

I also noticed a newish (mid-2010, as it turned out) MacBook on $BOSS's
desk; it had been intended for the new hire who turned us down and went to
Microsoft a few weeks ago. Since my old one is ancient and obsolete, this
was a major win for me. I spent the afternoon configuring it. Which was
tedious in the extreme -- see the notes for details.

Macs still feel somewhat toy-like to me. Apple's keyboards have always
been pretty horrid compared to IBM's, and the one-button UI gives the
impression of having been dumbed-down for newbies. I mean, it's great
marketing, but if you've been using computers professionally for the last
half-century, ...

I spent most of the evening splitting up Tempered Glass's next-to-last
practice session, so we'd have something to remember it by. I still need
to do the last session, and I think there may be some concerts
back there that need work. Note that the practice sessions will
not be going up on the web -- at least, not yet, and maybe not
ever. Nostalgic bear.

After that, I let the kids introduce me to Munchkin Cthulhu. Fun! I can
see how that can be an addictive game.

When it finally wound down around 1am I did a little more Perl hacking to
fix problems in the concert rendering, and remembered somewhat belatedly
that pseudoephedrine is a stimulant. Well, it's better than not
breathing.

My former band, Tempered Glass, has fallen apart in a shower of jagged
shards. Naomi and I intend to keep making music together, and we're
pleased to announce that we are now a duo called Lookingglass Folk. We
are hoping to pull off our first concert at Conflikt next year, taking
advantage of the year's worth of planning and hard work we put into it as
Tempered Glass.

The next two months are going to be a wild ride for the two of us, but the
concert we're putting together is going to be worth it. I'm going up the
weekend after next for a rehearsal; we'll know then whether we
can pull it off. If we do, it will be something special.

It rained most of the day; I stayed home and puttered. Lox and bagels for
lunch; we had a bag frozen in the fridge, and Colleen had bought cream
cheese, so I didn't have to go out. I made chicken quesadillas for dinner.

Notable bits of puttering included transferring Colleen's scooter supplies
to the Swissgear bag, which makes them much easier to keep organized and
to get at, moving the DHCP server, and dusting off Sherman (the Thinkpad
T21) so Colleen can use it for her embroidery program and some ancient
games. Sherman was so named by pocketnaomi, who borrowed him
for a couple of years.

A good, long walk, music, and signs of progress in The Case of the
Unfortunate Boyfriend (henceforth tCotUBF :) sort of made up for the fact
that I spent almost the entire damned day fighting with WiFi. I
don't get it. It used to Just Work, but after upgrades to Squeeze and
Oneiric my work laptop and home netbook seem to have trouble with some,
but not all, access points. Including the one here at the Starport,
unfortunately. Driver problems?

Fortunately, it seems to be ok with the WAP on my DSL modem, and has no
trouble at all with a wired connection, so it's still usable. But
annoying, and a waste of time. When I get home from Orycon I'm going to
try dropping back to an earlier version. And look for alternative
drivers.

Did I mention Orycon? Colleen and I will be up there this afternoon
through Monday.

Hmm. I think it was a pretty good day, but mostly I kept busy and didn't
notice. Which I guess makes it a very good day, in some sense.
I did some chord and singing practice, recorded The Owl and the Pussycat
with two microphones (the ribbon may have a slight edge, but it's really
hard for me to tell -- I'll have to get someone with younger ears to
help), and did a lot of work toward revamping the Makefile that builds
practice, concert and album web pages.

On the other hand, I wasn't feeling all that well in the afternoon, so I
opted out of the local housefilk to stay home, make dinner for Colleen,
and keep hacking. And it started raining just as I was leaving for a
walk. Which I wasn't feeling up to in any case.

And on the gripping hand, I did manage to post Songs for Saturday,
and made two icons (for trainwreck and Bank Transfer Day).

On the fourth hand, somewhat down on myself for not starting set-up early
enough to actually transfer money on the day. Which is minor in itself,
but triggers a long chain of associations with other things I
didn't do in time.

My attempt at CARE's Live Below The Line -- eating for $1.50/person -- was something of a
failure yesterday: they served pizza at work after the all-hands meeting,
and dinner was the crock-pot pot roast that wasn't ready in time for
dinner Sunday. (Though when I ran the numbers on the pot roast it came
out to about $1/serving, and I had $.50 worth of cottage cheese in the
morning, so what I actually spent was $1.50... :)

I'll do better today. I miss my coffee.

I did more work on the netbook, deleting its now-useless recovery
partition (1.4GB!), and quite a bit of music work in the evening. That
included the last bits of editing from last month's rehearsal, and working
out the chords on one song. As of now there's only one song that needs
any formatting work at all.

It's been a short week. Busy, exhausting, occasionally frustrating,
sometimes spectacularly wonderful. I don't think I can sum it up.

We flew to Seatac on Thursday, picked up our rental car -- I'd been
worried about getting to their offsite lot, but one look at Colleen and
they had someone drive it over for us. Total win. Drove up to Bothell
for our one night at the Country Inn. Not as good as I'd hoped, but the
room was huge, the WiFi was free, and the bar had bar snacks. Then we
headed over to the Herb Farm
for dinner.

I took a wrong turn and got us thoroughly lost. We finally pulled in to
the parking lot, after an hour on the road, just as dinner was starting at
7pm. I was able to answer their call and walk in the door just moments
later.

I was sorry to have missed the garden tour, but dinner's awesomeness was
not really diminished by this. It was just as gloriously awesome as my
last visit, but totally different. Which, as Angela (one of the staff)
told me, is what they aim for. I found myself talking to Angela after
dinner because she looks remarkably like a shorter version of Cat Faber.
But anyway.

I only got slightly lost going back to the hotel. The breakfast buffet
was free, but not really worth it, either.

I got us lost again trying to get to Central Market in Shoreline. I got us there, but it took a while.
(You may start to notice a pattern here.) We were, however, in good
humor, and Colleen enjoyed Central Market as much as I'd hoped she would.

I got lost again getting to the hotel. The overflow hotel, since the
Hilton was full when I went to make our reservations. Only slightly lost
-- I found Google's directions rather unhelpful, as they had been on the
way to the Herb Farm. I was already low on spoons when we got to the
Clarion and realized that Colleen's scooter was going to have problems on
the hills between there and the con hotel.

Then I forgot which was the con hotel, or rather hadn't bothered to write
it down. The desk clerk at the Clarion called and found a room for us in
the Holiday Inn next door, which is where Conflikt had been last year. I
got suspicious when the front desk hadn't heard about the con. I called
over to the Hilton. They had an accessible room, and I booked it. By
this time I was totally out of spoons. I had, by this time, put
Colleen's scooter in and out of the trunk 5 times, at something over 100
pounds each. That's half a ton of lifting, total. No wonder I was tired!

I had a delightful, if somewhat expensive, dinner with Colleen and Chaos
in the Hilton, then headed North to Promusica for two days of music. Via
the wrong freeway, of course. Fortunately I was able to find my way
there. Did I mention that there was a pattern?

The Tempered Glass rehearsal
weekend was wonderful -- a relaxing, comfortable two days, and some
amazing music-making. Amazing in part because of the speed at which we
were able to pick up on the new material. I felt like I was doing a lot
better than usual, and found myself getting back my old skill at figuring
out chords. Wow. Some good catching-up, too; a lot has happened since
Reno.

Sunday evening I drove back to the hotel for another dinner with Colleen
and Chaos, and I drove the Wolfling back to Marysville in the morning.
Without getting lost in either direction, I might add. We had a
father/daughter breakfast, and I got to see her current digs and talk
briefly with Steve Dixon.

The whole week has been kind of a blur. There was a little work in there,
too.

But Colleen had a wonderful time, which is the main thing. She handled
the travel much better than I'd feared she would; she really is getting
stronger and more independent even though it's hard to notice from close
in. I had a wonderful time, modulo a meltdown and a couple of
almosts. I'm going to declare it a Good Week.

Oh, and our concert at Conflikt in January is going to kick ass.
Just thought you ought to know.

There are links. A lot of them have to do with politics. Sorry about
that.

An interesting day. I took the van back to the Ford dealer to have the
dead headlight (which they'd missed last week at the 60K-mile service)
replaced, and showed how the assembly (they called it a "headlight
bucket") appeared to be loose, as Callie noticed over the weekend.

It came right out. Not attached at all. The bulb wasn't burned out --
the leads were broken off at the connector.

When they called back, they said a new bucket would be a little under $500
with the 15% discount for my trouble. And that there had been some body
damage in that area. WTF? We never had any body damage on the
right front... Of course, the dealer we bought the van from (used) is no
longer in business, and that was over 5 years ago in any case.

While waiting for my "Avoid Avoiding" group to start, a woman I didn't
know sat down across from me in the waiting room and asked if she could
tell me her problem. "I don't like myself much," she said. "Can you tell
me how to like myself more?" WTF? Does my Middle-Sized Bear aspect
really show that much? Weird.

After the usual disclaimer, I told her she should be a friend to herself.
Treat herself like a friend, talk to herself the way a friend would.
Encourage herself and praise herself for her accomplishments. Told her
about How
to Be Your Own Best Friend, which I read years ago. I hope it
helped. I think it did.

So... interesting. Not all in the Chinese sense, but...

Only one link, to NYTimes.com on decision fatigue. So will-power is proportional to
your brain's glucose level, and making decisions uses energy and lowers
it. Helps explain why dieting is so hard, doesn't it?

So... a pretty good day. There was some good music-making in the morning,
most of which I missed because I had a meeting to go to at work. I came
home for a (longish) lunch, and Tempered Glass got a good rehearsal in
while Colleen was out running errands. I went back to work after Callie
and Naomi left for Tahoe, (several hours late).

In the evening I chorded out and scripted all but one of the songs we
worked on over the weekend (I'll do the scripting on the last one this
morning) and got most of my packing done.

I ought to explain song-scripting. Tempered Glass's signature style is to
bounce the lead around among the three of us. (We don't always do that,
of course -- we have plenty of songs with Naomi and/or me on vocals and
Callie on flute -- but we do it a lot.) Naomi's the one who usually
scripts the voice changes; then we tweak it in rehearsals, and I make the
scripted and chorded lead sheets using custom LaTeX macros. It works.

Packing involved using Chami for the first time, and also the first time
using my new Eagle Creek cube organizer. That does a fine job of holding
five days' worth of shirts, socks, and underwear, and packs neatly in the
Travelpro suitcase with a pair of hiking boots and the med bag.
Underneath, alongside the tubes for the collapsing handle, I put a mic
stand base, a folding music stand, and Cyrano (the stuffed rhino who
doubles as my CPAP pillow). It's a bit tight.

I finally got to bed around half-past midnight.

Many of the day's links are about Google's purchase of Motorola Mobile.
That promises to be interesting; it's pretty clear that the big win will
be Moto's patent portfolio.

It was a pretty good weekend, on the whole, but there was more friction
than was good for us. That's fixable, now that we know how to plan
Tempered Glass visits. I'll get to that later.

It was also tiring, with about 500mi worth of driving, and me doing a lot
of the cooking, fetching and carrying. With special thanks to the Younger
Daughter, who was exceptionally helpful. We took her out to dinner Sunday
night, while Callie and Naomi were having dinner with old friends of N's,
and Mike Whitaker was visiting the Bohnhoffs. Good times were had.

We got in some good rehearsal time, too, with four songs worked on. One
of the problems, though, was trying to cram in an intensive rehearsal
session every day, along with shopping expeditions (Callie and Colleen), a
baseball game (Naomi and Mike), dinner in San Francisco (Callie and
Naomi), and a full day of work from home (me). Yeah. Not a terribly
realistic schedule.

One of the other problems was that Colleen, not being a musician herself,
really doesn't want to sit on the kind of intensive rehearsals that we do
when we're working on new songs. They quite understandably drive her
crazy. So...

The conclusion we (well, mostly Naomi, but she's Tempered Glass's artistic
director and main inspiration) came to was that, when they're visiting the
Starport, it's a social visit. Talking, hanging out, visiting other
friends, making music certainly, but if there's time to squeeze in an
actual rehearsal it's an extra. In contrast, when I go up to Seattle,
it's a "working weekend" and the emphasis will be on getting in some good,
solid rehearsal time every day.

Did I mention that we'll be giving a concert at Conflikt? That's the
plan. And it'll be almost all new material.

Did I mention the crab lasagne? There was crab lasagne. Also salmon. And
cheesy eggs, and bacon.

Plus a surprising anmount of coding done; about an average work-day's
worth in spite of being at home Friday and fitting it into the spaces
between bouts of insanity.

So, ... a good weekend, but kind of stressful and disappointing because we
tried to fit a week-long visit into a weekend, with predictable results.
We're learning, though -- next time will be better.

Um... ok. You'd think that after spending a lot of the weekend sitting on
my tail with my netbook, I'd have posted something. You'd be wrong.
Actually, I was mostly reading Flight of the Godkin Griffin (it starts with this post), ... and
taking care of my friends.

I originally planned to go to Seattle to rehearse with the other members
of Tempered Glass, Naomi and Callie. But Naomi started the weekend
feeling ghastly, her daughter had health problems of her own, and Callie
had a combination of chem homework and, by the time Monday morning came
around, a stomach bug. Saturday mid-day was mostly spent getting the
house ready for the house-cleaners who came in the afternoon, and Saturday
night was spent taking care of Naomi.

Late Saturday night (early Saturday morning?) N. asked me how I managed to
be so cheerful. I really didn't know, and still don't, except that
helping friends is one of the things I do, and taking care of sick people
is something I've gotten very good at over the last few years.
And it's easier to triage somebody else's piles of paper.

We didn't do much singing. A little.

And yet it was a good weekend for me. It was a relaxed weekend with
friends; plenty of time to hang out, talk, sit in companionable silence
with our respective books, and talk about love, friendship, chemistry,
cooking, and the uses of whimsy. Did I mention the salmon? Installing
the new cable modem? The rush of happiness when they both told me they
couldn't have made it through the weekend without me? (Yes, they could
have gotten help from more distant friends, but it wouldn't have been the
same.)

There were a couple of brief exchanges with Ame -- you'll find those in
the notes, flagged with a "/". And it was a good weekend for the
Middle-Sized Bear to manifest himself.

I'd been expecting it to be a working weekend. A different kind of work,
to be sure, but I'm not complaining. It really was good.

Our Easter "feast" was very lightly attended -- a max of three guests.
But two of them were extroverts, so I mostly hung out in the office until
they left. We usually have rabbit on Easter, but it looked way too
expensive this year so Colleen had gotten a spiral-cut ham at Costco.
Tasty. I also hard-boiled a dozen eggs, and the YD deviled half of them.

I finally emerged from my cave to sing around 8:30; we were joined by
Naomi on speakerphone half an hour or so later.

After I sang The
Rambling Silver Rose, Naomi remarked that for someone who claims not
to understand love at first sight, I manage to nail it in my songs. So
apparently I do understand it pretty well -- from second- and
third-hand accounts. N's theory is that it's a case of selective memory;
the few times when instant attraction leads to something deeper are the
ones that get remembered. I'll buy that.

But it was the IM conversation afterward that really went someplace
totally unexpected, when my (stillborn) daughter Amethyst broke in and
said something directly to N. It's true that I'm getting better at
role-playing in IM, and at listening to the voices in my head and giving
them labels, but... It was surprising, but felt entirely natural and
appropriate. //silly bear. I told him he needs to come visit my
garden more often; it's a peaceful place and he needs that more than he
knows.//

Last Thursday evening I flew up to Seattle for a weekend with Naomi and
Callie, the other 2/3 of Tempered
Glass. It was wonderful! OK, I have to admit that
dinner at The Herbfarm,
nominally to celebrate my 64th birthday, was the high point.
But simply hanging out with my bandmates, making music and fomenting evil
plans, was also good. As was hanging out with their kids, playing games,
celebrating the 5-year-old's birthday, singing with the 7-year-old, and
simply hanging out in the kitchen with sister-of-choice-in-law Callie.

... and helping Callie sing a concert of love songs to Naomi on Saturday,
and coffee and lunch with the Wolfling on Monday. And a couple of nice
walks.

Callie and Naomi's house in Shorline really comes close to being a second
home for me. Naomi is very good at coming up with things that are fun to
do but that I wouldn't have thought of on my own -- she masterminded the
Las Vegas trip, too. It was a very good weekend.

A good talk with Dr. Reed in the morning; she told me to force my walking
pace a little higher -- aerobic exercise will help my mood. (I tend
to walk more slowly, or even slow to a full stop, when I'm feeling down.
This drives the feedback loop in the wrong direction.)

And there was a moment of shared humor at work when I playfully
"volunteered" mr_kurt for an implementation job that we were
discussing as he was walking by. I think the important factor there is
knowing that the joke made me happy.

A pretty good day, actually. A three-mile walk by the airport, the
songbook for Hearts of Glass,..., and some good puttering.

On the other hand, I was up until nearly 1am chatting with AT&T tech
support about why I might be getting oly 10% of my usual bandwidth. His
only suggestion was to reset the router to factory defaults. This seemed
too drastic; I settled for resetting the broadband connection, which
appeared to work. (I found out this morning that it only worked for about
an hour; what finally did the trick was a reboot. Still less drastic than
a factory reset, which would have taken lots of fiddling to recover from.)

Mixed day, on the whole. A few links (I originally typed "kinks", which
I'm sure some of my readers would have preferred).

A pretty good day; lots of puttering. Typed in Naomi's script for the
Norwescon concert as the liner notes for the CD. Bid high in the
Interfilk auction at Consonance -- it's worth it. Spent more time working
on the website.

I also went to Southern Lumber for 1x12's, to become shelves in what once
was the "sewing room". (Before that it was the kids' bedroom, and it
still does double duty as a guest room.) Getting there. And I pulled
down a goodly number of guided-imagery mp3's from Kaiser.

On the downside, I had a blood sugar crash on the way back from Southern,
so stayed home rather than going out for a walk as originnally planned.
And then cooked up some chili for dinner.

A reasonably good IM conversation and a nice drive with Colleen finished
the day; I went splat somewhere around 11:30.

Considerably better, despite the rain -- I had a good, long IM talk with
pocketnaomi in the early afternoon, and a nice phone call/filk
mini-circle (dot?) with her and Colleen after dinner. Booked my next trip
to Seattle, for the weekend between my birthday and the YD's -- the timing
couldn't have been better.

In between, I went out shopping. CD labels, and an inexpensive set of
USB-powered computer speakers, at Staples; simethicone and a prescription
at Kaiser; razor blades and NIMH AAA batteries (for the cordless phone in
the office) at CVS; and coffee at Barefoot. Barefoot has just gotten
significantly more dangerous -- Harbor Freight opened a tool store a
couple of doors down. I remember getting Harbor Freight and Salvage
catalogs decades ago.

I also called my Mom. And the YD made a tasty dinner of salad, chicken,
asparagus, and yummy gluten-free biscuits brushed with garlic butter.

I started working on a Valentine's Day CD for Colleen, based on Tempered
Glass's concert
at NorWesCon 2010. When I told Naomi and asked her permission to put
one in the Interfilk auction at Consonance, one thing led to another and
we're now up to a run of 50. It will not be commercially
available -- it's all live, and very rough in spots.

I finally managed to take a walk: twice around the Rose Garden (about 3
miles). Most of it was like walking through sludge. And they say
exercise is good for depression. :P

I woke up about 2:30 am last night, feeling ice cold (though the
thermostat was still at 71, and my body temperature was 97.something), and
with my left knee agonizingly painful when I tried to straighten it. In
the end it took half an hour or so to gradually work it loose. Arthritis?
Flu? I still don't trust the damned thing. Sometime toward morning I
started sweating. Weird.

A good, even productive, day in spite of my nose continuing to be
an obstructionist. Occasionally a terrorist -- I really DO NOT LIKE not
being able to breath. Used afrin again because two hours after taking
sudafed I still couldn't breathe through my nose.

I went out to OSH and bought a long-shanked phillips screwdriver for the
scooter's battery box, but couldn't find anything obvious wrong with it.
I did confirm that the silicone-rubber-dome thingie is the circuit
breaker, however, and concluded that I must have reset it in the course of
my various fumblings-around.

I also went out with Colleen, the YD, and the BF (collectively "the kids")
to Cosentino's. Our favorite grocery store is closing in a couple of
weeks, and it's terribly sad. The shelves are starting to look bare in
spots. But they had booze for 25% off, and I scored some Bacardi Gold and
Wild Turkey.

Meanwhile, I made excellent progress formatting songs for Tempered Glass.
Six songs downloaded and formatted for the songbook; one fully chorded and
three more partially chorded (first verse and chorus). Progress.

This last weekend we went to Las Vegas and met Callie and Naomi there,
celebrating our 35th anniversary and Naomi's birthday. (The joint
vacation was N's idea, of course; she's good at coming up with evil
schemes.) It was mostly good. Parts were very good. As it
turned out, I didn't need to worry about getting enough walking in.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, of course. And when an
ambitious list of "things we want to do" meets the reality of low energy
levels, injuries and other physical limitations, sleeping in, missed
connections, and the fact that slot machines no longer have coin slots,
there are bound to be some disappointments. But it was good. The buffets
were tasty and cheap, some of the restaurants we ate in were very tasty
and not at all cheap, the scenery (architectural, natural, and human) was
fascinating, and Cirque de Soleil's Zumanity was... interesting.

Zumanity was my first contact with Cirque; it probably wasn't a very good
introduction. The acts that were supposed to be funny I found painful,
and none of it was what I would consider sensual. Some of it was
beautiful, though. I could have done with more of that.

The official birthday dinner was at Joe's Steak, Seafood, and Stone Crab
in the Forum Shops at Caesars. It didn't help that we got a late start,
went in separate cabs, and C&N ended up getting dropped off at
Caesar's, a good block or so away. And owned by a different organization
altogether. We had to send out a search party (i.e. me). But it was
yummy.

A lot of st/rolling with Colleen. At one point Saturday night her scooter
simply and suddenly died, with symptoms (including inability to charge)
that indicated a bad connection in the battery box. Fortunately we were
already back in our hotel (the Excalibur), and I pushed her back to the
room. After calling up the house engineer with a cart-full of tools only
to find that his four-in-one screwdriver was hopelessly short, I set out
to Walgreen's (about 2.5 blocks away) and bought their only screwdriver
set. Too short. But somehow the act of flipping the box upside down and
shaking it a few times knocked the connection back together, and it held
up through the rest of the weekend.

And we made some good music, especially Monday afternoon -- we extended
our checkout times to 3pm so that we could have more time. I'd been
afraid that Colleen would have trouble keeping herself amused, but as it
turned out she needed the time to catch up on her sleep. I have half a
dozen new songs to learn, and it put a great cap on a busy, exhausting,
but basically good weekend.

So, yeah, a good weekend for the most part, and awesome in spots. And a
big success at work yesterday for the team that I'm part of. Can't say
much about that, unfortunately, but it took a heck of a lot of pressure
off. So I'm a well-fed and contented bear right now.

I don't have all of the OryCon concert online yet -- I'm still
waiting for audio to replace what my fat fingers missed. But the video of
about half the concert is up on YouTube, and the audio
from our songs in the KinderFilk concert is up on Tempered-Glass.info.

Not having Naomi on board made for a set that wasn't nearly as good as it
could have been, but I guess we did OK. It felt like a good
performance, anyway.

My recording of our concert, unfortunately, does not appear to have
survived -- it cuts off mysteriously after a couple of seconds. :P Clumsy
bear was probably clumsy with the buttons again. I know there were
several other recordings made, though, so all is not lost, though it may
be a couple of days before I can get my hands on them.

Lots of catching-up with people we don't see very often, especially Roy
Torley and Joan Gaustad, who we spent several hours talking with on Sunday
(and whose concert also kicked serious ass).

Travel was a lot easier than I expected; having (niece-of-choice) Kaylee
along helped immesurably, since it meant that we could take all the bags
while Colleen scooted. Public transit from the airport to the hotel and
back was cheap and smooth.

That, I guess, is what happens when I have a lot of work mixed in with a
good extended weekend in Seattle, and a regrettable tendency to get sleepy
an hour or two before midnight.

But it was, on the whole, a good week, and I got quite a lot done both at
work and over the weekend with our Tempered Glass rehearsal.

Um... right. Highlights.

A couple of good, fast walks, but no long ones.

Lunch with Callie and Chaos in Redmond. My first visit to Soul Food
Books. Singing with Callie and Naomi, both separately and together.
Learning a new song; showing off an old one. Ordering a new facehugger
(mask) from Kaiser and receiving my new Keen boots from REI. Realizing
the advantages of my oft-bemoaned inability to detect implicit messages.

Lots of things left undone.

And as you might expect for a week's worth of backup, there are quite a
few good links up there under the cut.

This trip is mainly for Tempered Glass to practice for our gig at Orycon
and talk about upcoming recording plans, but there will undoubtedly be
some time around the edges for hanging out with friends. Leave a comment
and we'll see if we can work something out.

A pretty good day, but occasionally painful without even the compensation of
a walk or bike ride. It started with the standing, bending and lifting
involved in doing the dishes and putting away the groceries, and ended
with overusing some arm muscles manhandling a gig bag made way too heavy
with songbooks and a music stand.

In between I mostly hung out at the Ugglas' house, which they're moving
out of next week, hanging out and helping pack, mostly by handing things
to people. It was followed by one of their Rise Up Singing
"songfests". A good day with friends, and worth the comparatively small
price.

I came home to aspirin and a hot bath in the walk-in tub, which I can soak
in up to my neck if I scrunch down into the footwell. The hot water
triggered the same trembling that I get from a good backscratch or
nestling down into Colleen's arms. So that's one more data point to
triangulate from: simple physical pleasure. I'll figure it out one of
these days.

The 2010
Pegasus Ballot is up online. I'm not on it, so I'll just be pushing
for Ship of Stone in the classics category. That will make
it even easier to
trade my trip to OVFF for one or two trips to Seattle to rehearse for the
Tempered Glass gig at Orycon. I'd like to do both, but there are these
time and money things... (ETA: not to mention a friend's wedding that I
really need to go to. So it will be good not to feel torn about
it.)

A good day -- very relaxing. Most of the late morning/early spent
quietly, by myself, on the computer or reading. Dinner was a Crustless Crab Quiche that Callie remembered from Weight Watchers;
fortunately someone else on the net did, too.

After dinner we sang -- it felt wonderful to be singing with Callie and
Naomi again. I love our band. Went splat around 00:30.

Oh. Right. The problem wasn't so much lack of time as lack of a decently
large screen, trackball, and full-sized keyboard. Or so I tell myself.

But all the details and links are up there under the cut.
Hopefully there will be a real Norwescon post soon, with links to the
concert audio. No love for the hotel, who came in and set the clock
ahead, then made us end early without our closer. What we did get to
sing (everything except Landscapes and Gentle Arms of Eden) was good.

The hotel was too spread out, and the function space too crowded. Other
than that I had a pretty good time. A few good conversations.

Going back in time a little, I flew up Wednesday, which gave me some time
with Callie and Naomi and the kids, for rehearsals and just plain hanging
out. So that was good. There aren't any PNW cons in the offing until fall,
so the next visit or two will be just visits. That's a good
thing.

It was a great visit, and a pretty good con, but I'm very happy to be home.

I was feeling lazy and unproductive by late evening, but that just
suggests that an underslept Bear is an unreliable reporter -- it was
actually a pretty productive day. I did quite a lot of work in both the
Starport's intranet and Tempered Glass's lyrics directory, and went out
and explored Lowes with Colleen. And cooked dinner, of course. And
ripped half a dozen or so CDs.

And the YD's report card shows remarkable improvement!! Only one C, one
A -- it's about time. (And an F which is apparently due to the school's
(Winblows-based) computer system dropping data from half the class.) Go
YD! Of course, she also turns 18 on Thursday. I feel old.

I also tried out the SwissTech shoulder bag that I got on the cheap at
Target a couple of weeks ago. It's frustratingly close to excellent. If
it were an inch taller, had a detachable strap, and had double zippers it
would be wonderful. Well, at least I know what I want.

Today's link, and it's a good one, is cadhla's new
song, Jenny and
Karen. Go read it. That's where today's userpic comes from.

A good day, and productive for a Saturday even though most of that
productivity was mere "puttering". I got the 2009 receipts sorted,
finally, and did some web hacking on the intranet, which has been sadly
neglected of late.

Took a st/roll around the Rose Garden with Colleen. Delightful, warm
weather. Finished chording out "Falling for Lancelot", and did some
practicing. My voice was somewhat wrecked for some reason, so mostly
chords.

Picked some sweet peas from the front garden at Colleen's request, and
made dinner consisting of steak, kasha, and cole slaw, with strawberries
and whipped cream for desert.

The raw notes for the day include the entire router/dsl upgrade saga,
spanning roughly the last month. I'm feeling pretty good about that, even
though I would have saved a heck of a lot of money if I'd done it a year
ago.

I'm starting to think that I need an issue tracker for some of this stuff,
rather than cluttering the to.do list with unfinished items that the
format isn't really suited for. Suggestions? (Flat files, please, not a
database.)

A good day, and all's well that ends better, with a little bit of practice
and a lot of good Snuggle. Weight still down at 197.6, which is good, and
X over ssh has usable performance from work via the new
gateway. I win.

Work was taken up by a couple of meetings and a tech report.

Some good links under the cut, as usual. Who would have guessed
that there would be a Y2k+10 problem, caused by confusion between BCD and
binary? I remember BCD... New Yorkers and Londoners, especially, will
appreciate Underskin

Got a fair amount done, and had a basically good day, but no walkies. My
calves were still hurting a little -- I think the elliptical used some
muscles I'm not used to using. Don't want to push my luck, and besides it
was raining much of the day.

Some good shopping at Ross (on the way back from picking up prescriptions
at Kaiser): a 26" Samsonite suitcase (so I won't have to keep borrowing
Colleen's), and a 12" 5qt "saucepan". The latter is more of a
straight-sided frying pan; it has a glass lid and looks perfect for bacon
and a lot of the other things we pan-fry. I really like All-Clad's
"Emerilware" line: metal handles, and a high-quality non-stick lining.

And I managed to get some work done on lead sheets for Tempered Glass. Finally!

A good day -- I woke up to find my weight lower than it's been all year.
Since Christmas, even. I am not complaining, and am trying to
figure out what I'm doing differently. Near as I can tell it's a matter
of low carbs and no snacking. Especially, no candy from the bowl at
work. As I said, I'm not complaining.

And in the evening I came home to find a card/letter from my cousin Alice,
who I haven't seen in several years and had kind of lost track of. I have
a lot of re-connecting and catching up to do.

A very good day, made a little sad around the edges by having to leave
Promusica, but happy to be home again. A very good Tempered Glass rehearsal --
surprisingly good, considering that the last time we were together was
back in August.

The high point, really, was in the airport seeing two women come in
wearing cute hats with ears, and take seats at the next gate over. Just
before boarding I walked over, said "I just wanted to say that I love your
hats!" I was rewarded with thanks and smiles, but I think my grin going
back was bigger. Go me!

Poking around in the Wolfling's room looking for a missing USB hard drive
interface I managed to find the roll of purple gaffer's tape, a coffee
mug, and a Windows XP SP2 OEM install disk that matched an envelope I
found in the office a couple of weeks ago. But no interface.

A nice walk, twice around the pond, with a little meditation break in the
middle. A call from Naomi in the afternoon.

And I boxed up the last of the 2008 receipts, put the tax returns in the
filing cabinet, and took the box up to the garage attic. And moved enough
other boxes around that someone could actually sit in the other
chair, and maybe evem use a computer if I have time to set one up.

The highlight of the late morning was an expedition to the Pruneyard mall,
which has a Barnes&Noble and a Trader Joe's in close proximity. I had
a blast watching Naomi and Colleen zip around on their scooters. I scored
a book on sleep (30% off) and a Complete Stories of Arthur C. Clarke.

I got quite a lot of wonderful, calm, Middle-Sized Bear time with Naomi.
She raised the fascinating, difficult question of "what do you
get out of doing this?" It's one that Jen asked during her last visit
back in April, and I still don't have an answer. I'm gradually learning
that I don't really have to have an answer, but I'm still
intrigued by it. Or maybe it's just the pleasure of having a lovely woman
snuggled up next to me.

Gave Naomi my big suitcase (it was cheap, and has maybe two or three trips
left in it) so she could take Mufasa (the new djembe) up to Seattle with
her; she'll bring it with her to OVFF.

I had trouble getting to sleep. But it was a very good day, a little
bitter-sweet knowing that Naomi was going home in the morning.

You're probably not going to be all that interested in what plans I made
for last weekend's trip to Seattle, my shopping list, and so on. I'll
just summarize my notes:

Next time make sure "buy" items get copied to the "pack" list after
they're purchased. This will prevent disasters like a half-dozen blocks
of mozzerella being left behind in the fridge.

The little stuffbags I got at OSCon, about half a grocery bag's worth, are
really hard to get out from under an airplane seat. If I'm going to play
that game again I need something more like a stuffable dufflebag. I think
I have one somewhere.

Four days -- more like three and a quarter, actually -- are nowhere near
enough for a proper visit, especially with all I wanted to cram into it.
Needs more like a month.

The best-laid plans...

Nevertheless, it was a wonderful trip, both relaxing and productive. I
love my friends, and my Wolfling. I miss them already.

A low-key, friendly end to a great weekend. Took a walk, finally, while
Callie was off at an appointment and Naomi was napping. Ended the visit
with Callie's birthday picnic. I don't think N. realized that I knew randwolf back when he was in the Bay Area.

And at the end of the day a drink, dinner, and good conversation at home,
falling into bed sometime around 11:30 and snuggling with my own wonderful
Colleen.

While I was out walking I discovered that I'm starting to pay attention to
what I'm saying to myself. "I am a stupid bear. No, I was a
stupid bear. I'm smarter now." Don't remember what I was stupid
about; that's fine.

The elusive Amethyst remains elusive, but apart from that it was a very
good day. A little meditation, a visit to my wolfling daughter chaoswolf, taking her and her flatmate out to yummy sushi at Riki
Riki, an evening of tasty Tempered Glass rehearsal, and deep conversation
starting in the library and ending up in the hot tub. Got to bed late but
very happy.

I managed finally to get in touch with _amethyst_fire_ --
we're supposed to have lunch today. It will be good to finally meet her.

Colleen called and said that she can now get in and out of her van
unassisted -- no walker, and no need for someone to help with her legs.
Yay!!

Before dinner we went to Snapdoodle Toys, where Naomi got her monster a couple of weeks ago.
She'd seen a wonderful dragon there that she thought would be perfect for
Colleen. It'll have to be a carry-on. but I can manage. It is indeed a
wonderful toy store.

Dinner was at Preservation
Kitchen Excellent. Definitely going there with Colleen; they have a
grilled scallop appetizer and a wonderful caprese salad. Yum to the max.

We ended the evening with a fairly serious Tempered Glass rehearsal --
Gentle Arms, The River, A Healing In This Night, Hymn. We're really
finding our voice as a group. Go us!

A very good day. Relaxing. Tagged along with Callie while she ran
errands, hung out with Naomi and noodled away on guitar, helping her relax
while doing stressful work. Sang her QV with the new verse
(Pandora) as well-earned congratulations on getting through a couple
of weeks of hell. Music and conversation, and getting parboiled in the
hot tub. Yeah, a good day.

Two major (to me) steps along the river. The first was that I actually
noticed that I was smiling, and when I called Colleen she said she could
hear the smile in my voice. Note: I didn't notice that I was
happy, I noticed that I was smiling. Happiness was an
inference.

The other was rephrasing a statement that "I should have (done X)" to read
"I could have (done X) if I'd thought of it at the time." That
goes along with the "I should stop shoulding myself" project, and means
that I actually am more aware of what I'm saying to myself.

Naomi and I sang "There Is a Healing In This Night" in the hot tub with
me, and afterward we sang her braided Tempered Glass arrangement with
Callie.

The day ended with some Middle-Sized Bear time, Naomi and I taking turns
leaning on one another's shoulders. I am loved. The only thing that
could have made it better would have been having Colleen along. Next time.

A good day: an uninteresting flight, a good insight, good conversations,
and music. Can't ask for much more than that. Kat's guitar, a Little
Martin, was easy to carry thanks to a backpack rig, but occupies a bit
more space in the overhead bin on a 737.

The main thing I forgot to pack was the six blocks of Kraft mozzerella
we'd bought for Naomi. Grump -- that's going to be hard to ship up.

The aha! of the day came from realizing that being a Middle-Sized Bear
probably has a lot to do with mindfulness - it's a matter of expanding
centered awareness and stillness to include the other person. Cool!

On the way back from the airport with Callie I mentioned the difficulty I
have in making the transition from random routine to concentrated work and
finding time for geekery at home. She told me about homecoming rituals --
the things you do when you get home to leave the work day behind. Perhaps
I could devise something similar that could get me into the hacker
headspace. Well worth thinking about.

Spent some time with Naomi in the evening alternating song-swapping with
being in Middle-Sized Bear mode. I win.

A pretty good day. It started off with the final day of OSCon: good
keynotes, fun sessions, and a couple of brief conversations. It ended
early enough for me to go in to work and do some catching-up and planning,
though no actual programming.

The day ended with a call from Callie suggesting a Tempered Glass practice
session to help improve Naomi's mood. It worked, and helped me and Callie
as well, though it did end up more like a song circle because the lag made
it impossible to sing together.

I think streaming audio might work better, but it will still have to be
half-duplex, with one side leading (and turning off their speakers) and
the other side singing along (and maybe recording).

Naomi remarked that she often forgets how effective music can be at
improving her mood. So do I. I'm going to have to try to remember, now,
and make more time for it.